The Politician

by Andrew Young

  After Cheri and I put the kids to bed and the quiet overcame us, we remembered that it was Christmas Eve and we were far from friends and family and unable to give our kids the holiday they usually enjoyed. On Christmas Day, we managed a small celebration with a tree Fred had arranged and the few presents we had brought from home. Cheri and I called our families and had some awkward conversations, and we had fun playing in the snow with the kids. Rielle was unhappy to be out of contact with the senator over the holiday and impatient to move on to California, where she hoped that Fred Baron would set us up in a house in either San Diego or Santa Barbara. The latter was her first choice because it was the home of her spiritual adviser-a guy called Bob-who was her most important source of “spiritual” support.

  Anyone who spent any time around Rielle knew that Bob McGovern was the source of wisdom who guided many of her decisions. She called him “an intuitive,” which in her world meant that he possessed a sort of sixth sense that he could use to acquire special insight into any situation and to predict the future by reading the stars. Although I had never met him, I heard Rielle consult him on the phone many dozens of times. Often she wou‹. Old just leave a message describing her problem and requesting he intervene. A little while later, she would say she could “feel” the changes Bob was “creating” in the spirit realm. Because we paid her bills, I learned that Bob charged for his cell phone consultations-two hundred dollars was typical-and that Rielle relied on him for help with everything from the profound to the ridiculous.

  The ridiculous was on display in Aspen on the one occasion when we all went out to eat together. With the kids in mind, we picked a burger-​and-​shakes place called Boogie’s Diner. With 1950s-​style music and decorations, the place is as casual as you can get and still have sit-​down service, so most people order something greasy and chomp away. Rielle left Bob two voice mails about her Reuben sandwich. To be precise, the issue was the Russian dressing, which she found lacking, and she wondered whether she should send her meal back to the kitchen. She did. Twice.

  The impatient and self-​indulgent attitude that led Rielle to make a double fuss over a Reuben sandwich would get worse as her due date grew closer. But as much as she appalled us, we also tried to empathize with her because she was alone, without emotional support from her baby’s father, and scared of everything, including giving birth. She also knew that a major effort was being made to control her and that my loyalties were with Cheri, the kids, and John Edwards, in that order.

  After just four days in Aspen, we all packed our stuff and got back on the private jet to spend a week in San Diego. We landed there on December 27, crammed ourselves and our luggage into a rental car that was way too small, and drove to the Loews Coronado Bay hotel. After check-​in, when another envelope full of cash was handed to me, we all got back in the car so we could hit an ice-​cream shop for the kids and a drugstore so I could pick up a few necessities like toothbrushes and shaving supplies. While I was in the store and everyone waited outside, I spotted a new edition of the Enquirer on the news rack and was relieved to see we weren’t on the cover. I thumbed through a copy while at the register and still didn’t see anything about Rielle or the senator. When I brought the paper to the car, I said, “Hey, good news. We’re not in the National Enquirer.” Then I glanced down at the paper as it fell open to page six, where I saw a nice picture of Cheri next to a larger and very unflattering photo of Rielle with her mouth hanging open and her left hand extended, clawlike, making her look like a Tyrannosaurus rex in a maternity smock.

  “Oh shit,” I said without thinking.

  “What?” said Rielle and Cheri in unison.

  Cheri took the paper out of my hand and got into the backseat of the car to look at it. As I drove, I could see she was studying it carefully. The article didn’t offer anything new about Edwards, Rielle, or the Young family but was instead a breathless report titled “Edwards Love-​Child Bombshell Causes Nationwide Frenzy.” (The last two words, “Nationwide Frenzy,” were printed in red ink.) Since no new facts were offered, the only real new tidbit was the picture of Cheri, which she didn’t like but I thought was fine. Rielle, as you might e‹ asxpect, was unhappy with her photo.

  During our week at Coronado Bay, we ran up a $10,000 tab as Rielle used every service the hotel had to offer while Cheri and I took the kids to Legoland, SeaWorld, and the San Diego Zoo. I authorized our biggest single room service purchase on December 29 when I realized as we were leaving the hotel for the zoo that it was Cheri’s birthday. (I got a little help when Cheri said, “You don’t even know what day it is today, do you?”)

  After apologizing, and apologizing, I spent the time at the zoo walking a step and a half behind Cheri and performing child care like the world’s best dad. When I was able to get a private moment, I used my cell phone to call Rielle and ask her to help me out. She called the concierge, who went to the hotel gift shop and bought a bunch of odd presents. The concierge also got Cheri balloons, flowers, and a birthday cake, and the kitchen sent a small banquet to our room. It was a celebration, but nothing like the all-​stops-​out birthdays I had arranged for Cheri in the past. The proof was in the pictures, which show my wife and supposed mistress seated together at a well-​appointed table, forcing smiles.

  Cheri’s birthday was just one moment in what was becoming an unnervingly surreal misadventure. Unable to tell anyone where we were, and barred from speaking honestly with colleagues and friends, I began to feel as if I were watching the world turning from a spot on the moon. The Internet became even more important to me, and I followed news sites closely for some hint that the bargain I had struck with John Edwards was going to help him win Iowa and grab the momentum to propel him to the nomination. Everywhere I looked, I saw that he was gaining on the front-​runner, Obama. This success came from a new campaign strategy that stressed taking a tough approach to the election battle with Republicans. Edwards told his audiences, “You try and nice them to death, they’ll trample you.” This message worked with activist Democrats who had seen too many of their guys take the “high road” to defeat.

  As Senator Edwards barnstormed across the state, the press took note of the fact that he was significantly tardy-an hour late wasn’t unusual-for every event. But no one knew that the delays were caused, in part, by the time he used on the phone listening to his angry wife, comforting his lonely mistress, and maintaining his relationship with me. In the ten years I had known him, John Edwards had never tried harder to strengthen our bond, by sharing information and expressing concern and gratitude. In one call, he said to me, laughing, “[Former president] Clinton’s been calling around trying to hire you… He said he would still be president if he had you to cover for him.” On another call, he left a message noting he had just finished an interview on CNN with Larry King but wanted to make sure “you’re safe and in a place where you are good.”

  By “place,” the senator meant state of mind, and I didn’t expect to be in a good place until we got our normal lives back. If he got the nomination and Mrs. Edwards survived, we would be hard-​pressed to find a way ‹ toout of our arrangement with Rielle before November. If he didn’t win the nomination but wanted to pursue either the vice presidential slot or a place in some future Democratic administration, we’d be in the same predicament. Barring a sudden surge of honesty, the only way we were going to get out of our commitment would be if Mrs. Edwards died. And we still loved her too much to hope for this terrible outcome.

  The three of us watched the reports on the Iowa caucus results in Fred’s house in Aspen. (We had returned there once his friend from Georgia had vacated the place.) Barack Obama won handily, becoming the genuine front-​runner for the nomination. John Edwards offered a raspy thank-​you to the voters who had given him second place. Unfortunately for him, Edwards had gone “all in” in Iowa, and he finished with just 1 percent more of the vote than Hillary Clinton. And while Obama and Clinton had big organizations in the next battleground
state, New Hampshire, Edwards had no real organization there, and was quickly running out of money.

  “It’s not about me,” said Edwards in New Hampshire. “It’s about the families who deserve a real chance in this country.”

  With Obama trumpeting “change” and Hillary turning on the emotion (her eyes welled with tears when a voter asked about the rigors of the campaign), Edwards continued with the basic themes he had used in Iowa, stressing that he would fight for the average American. But as he faced opponents with far more resources and depth of support, he was eventually reduced, in his last days of campaigning, to pleading that a vote cast for him would not be wasted.

  On New Hampshire primary day, the senator actually took time to call me in Aspen. I was out playing in the snow with the kids, so he left a message. It said, in part, “Just wanted all [his emphasis] of you, including her, to know that I am thinking about you. I will be in South Carolina tomorrow, flying in there in the morning, and should be by myself tomorrow night, so I will talk to you then.”

  Rielle, whose belly was approaching basketball size, was now living for the moments when she could talk to the senator at length. Uncomfortable and lonely, she consulted Bob on a regular basis, watched the TV news channels, and when there was no election news, searched for reruns of Law & Order. This show and her pink cell phone, which now displayed a photo of her lounging with the senator whenever it was on, were comfort objects for her. She used them to pass the long hours in the house because she was unable to go out because of the paparazzi. Aspen was crawling with them.

  Rielle knew long before the polls closed that the results of the New Hampshire primary were going to be worse for Edwards than the Iowa caucuses. We watched the results in the library, which overlooked snowcovered mountains. He got clobbered, finishing a distant third behind the winner, Hillary Clinton, and the runner-​up, Obama. Mrs. Clinton claimed the title of “Comeback Kid,” and Obama finished just three points behind her. This success, in a‹s s largely rural and almost entirely white state, would help propel his fund-​raising toward a record-​setting total. It also suggested that Democrats were ready for either a black candidate or a woman. Edwards gamely declared, “Two states down, forty-​eight to go. I’m in this race to the convention, and I intend to be the nominee of my party.”

  Realistically, the Democrats in New Hampshire had just made the contest for the presidential nomination a two-​person affair, and if Edwards was running for anything, it was to be as candidate for vice president or for a spot in some future Democratic administration. After New Hampshire, even Fred Baron’s enthusiasm began to wane, but he remained interested because his friend might win the veep slot or be named attorney general. In either of these spots, Edwards could help protect the nation’s trial lawyers from Republican efforts to cut their business by imposing tort reform.

  While some Democrats began calling for the senator to drop out, we turned our attention to finding a more permanent hideout where we could give our kids some semblance of a normal life. School was starting, and Cheri and I wanted to go home. But now Fred and the senator were insisting we stay away and keep Rielle under control until his part in the election was over or Mrs. Edwards died. Santa Barbara was now the only place Rielle was even willing to consider for her hideout. This decision had been made during a blowup that began with a suggestion from Fred Baron. He told us of a place in the Southwest “where they take care of situations like this” in utter privacy for wealthy clients. Rielle took this to mean that Fred wanted to send her to a clinic for late-​term abortions. In fact, Fred was recommending a secluded retreat, with staff, where celebrities and other pregnant guests get the utmost privacy. But nothing anyone said could reassure Rielle, and the argument made her even more eager to live near Bob McGovern. On January 10, we took another private jet flight, this time from Aspen to Santa Barbara. While we were in the air, Fred left me a voice mail that confirmed how things might be changing now that the dream shared by John and Elizabeth Edwards (and the shared ambition that held them together) was breaking apart:

  Andrew, it’s Fred. I just want to give you a heads-​up on something. I’m gonna be meeting with the principal tomorrow, but they want you to know that he is not taking your calls or her calls right now because of his circumstance, uh, with EE [Elizabeth Edwards] and not to take it personally, but it will get better soon. But right now he is in a bad place… When you get settled out there, give me a buzz.

  By calling the senator “the principal” and referring to Rielle as “her,” Fred Baron displayed a little of the lawyer’s impulse to assure himself plausible deniability. He may have spoken this way out of habit or because he worried about future legal problems. To me it just sounded strange, as if Fred were backing away emotionally. This turned out to be true. As Fred later told me, in the weeks after the New Hampshire primary the Clintons put extra pressure on him to abandon Senator Edwards and get him and the nation’s trial lawyers behind Hillar‹s by’s campaign.

  Fred’s account squared with comments I heard from the senator, who was worried about losing his support. He had talked to me about how Fred’s cash would be only “our short-​term solution.” Edwards believed this because he thought Fred would soon shift his interest to another candidate. He also knew that Fred had been diagnosed with cancer and, like Mrs. Edwards, might not be around for very long. With this in mind, he said that Bunny Mellon was more likely to provide “the long-​term solution” to his need to fund both Rielle’s lifestyle and an organization to keep the Edwards name in front of the public after the election. (Bunny’s support would also keep me employed.) He was confident about Bunny’s loyalty because he had been building a relationship with her. She was so fond of him that she had given him one of her gold necklaces to carry as a good-​luck charm.

  Despite the concerns the senator expressed, in the winter of 2007-2008, Fred Baron’s short-​term support was unwavering. He spent time on the phone with Rielle when she needed comforting and enlisted his wife, Lisa Blue, to do the same. Fred also said that money was “no object” and told me to spend whatever it took to placate Rielle and Cheri, and he would pay the bills. But because Mrs. Edwards’s condition was not as dire as the senator had told us, this was beginning to look like a long-​term project. Believing Fred would eventually stop writing checks, we set aside the money Bunny had sent for future use. As the senator kept saying, “Fred’s the short-​term solution and Bunny is the long-​term solution.”

  On January 10, we boarded Fred’s jet to leave Aspen for good and landed in Santa Barbara to start house hunting. Encouraged by Fred to “make everyone comfortable,” I checked everyone into the Biltmore Four Seasons at Butterfly Beach. Although Rielle was disappointed that we couldn’t get suites at the exclusive Bacara Resort & Spa, the Biltmore was a luxurious five-​star place. Built in Spanish colonial style with red tile roofs and bubbling fountains, the hotel offered attentive service from the moment you arrived and were greeted by bellmen wearing argyle sweaters. Rielle had to inspect three different rooms and request upgrades, but to her credit, we wound up with blissfully quiet accommodations overlooking the croquet green. When the kids ran to look at the ocean, they saw a pod of dolphins jumping in the water about a quarter mile from the beach.

  The main task I had to accomplish in Santa Barbara was finding a home where Rielle could wait out the end of her pregnancy and raise her baby through the first few months of life. Cheri flew home for a couple of days to clean Eric Montross’s house (and take down the Christmas tree there) so he could put it back on the market. When she got there, she discovered reporters had left about a dozen notes and business cards slipped under the front door.

  In Santa Barbara, Rielle and I met real-​estate agents, who were told that she was my “stepsister,” and we scoured rental listings on the Internet. I found several nice houses in the $5,000 to $10,000 (per month) range and was sure I had discovered the perfect spot when I stumbled upon a mountaintop home owned by Herb Peterson,
who had invented the Egg McMuffin for McDonald’s. Mr. Peterson, who was going into a nursing home, o‹nurffered me a Heineken, and we shared his last beer in that house while Rielle looked around and decided it did not have the right karma.

  The winner in what became a dream house contest was a huge, single-​level home in the gated Montecito neighborhood of Ennisbrook. Adjacent to Oprah Winfrey’s estate (where Barack Obama had recently held a fund-​raiser) and hidden behind its own secondary gate, the hacienda-​style home had nine-​foot-​high steel-​and-​glass entry doors, a great room with a grand piano and a view of the ocean and mountains, and a library with a fifteen-​foot ceiling. The layout of the place, which offered separate wings for our family and Rielle, provided a measure of privacy for all of us. The final stamp of approval came from Bob McGovern, whom I met for the first time when he arrived in his BMW 740i to perform a blessing, which Rielle said would “clear the energy” of the place.

  Roughly six feet two and well over two hundred pounds, Bob was not at all what I expected. A few years past sixty, he had bushy hair that was silvery gray and a big belly that made him look like Captain Kangaroo. His voice was extremely measured and soothing, and his smile seemed genuine. I didn’t go inside to watch him do his thing, but whatever it was, it made Rielle happy and calm, and I appreciated his effect on her.

  When Cheri got back, we all moved in. We had gone to great lengths to hide from the press and the public, so we couldn’t risk enrolling the kids in school. Instead, we found a teacher who would come to homeschool the kids and establish a routine for them. Ennisbrook isn’t exactly teeming with kids, so I regularly took them to the park and the local YMCA, where they met lots of playmates, and I let them run on the beach as much as possible.